Bets BIG on India; plans USD 2 billion Investment in India

Despite uncertainties in the telecom sector, Chinese equipment maker Huawei is placing high bets on the Indian market and plans to invest USD 2 billion over the next four years here as it looks to aggressively market consumer devices and set up global R&D centre in the country. The Chinese company, which clocked USD 1.5 billion in revenues from India in 2011-12, is also betting big on the roll out of 4G LTE (high speed broadband services) solutions in India and is targeting more than 50 per cent share of the contracts coming in. “2011 was a good year for Huawei because our revenue in India increased about 20 per cent. Last year, we began building a new R&D centre in Bangalore, which will house more than 5,000 people. From 2011, the plan is to invest USD two billion in five years in India,” Huawei India Chief Executive Officer Cai Liqun said. This includes the R&D centre, manufacturing and marketing among others, he added. The company began work on setting up a research and development centre in Bangalore last year, which is expected to house more than 5,000 professionals. It is investing USD 150 million in the facility, which is expected to become operational from June 2013. Besides, it also has a global service resource centre (GSRC) in Bangalore along with a global network operations centre (GNOC), which is its largest such centre outside of China. These centres cater to its clients across 140 countries. “We are also planning to set up a global technology centre (GTEC) along with the others (existing centres) in Bangalore maybe this year or the next (year). This Centre will focus on providing technical support to clients globally,” Liqun said. He added that GTEC will handle technical issues of customers globally but declined to comment on the number of people that would be hired. “We have GTECs in China, but this will be first outside China. It is under discussion. Indians have language advantage as well as technology, that is what we want to capitalise on through this centre,” Liqun said. The company, which invests as much as 12 per cent of its USD 32 billion global revenues (in 2011), has most often been linked with security concerns and continues to face such problems globally. Australia had barred the company from participating in contracts for the national broadband network, while it faces investigations by the US congress (along with rival ZTE) to determine if the contracts will give the “Chinese government an opportunity to hijack the nation’s infrastructure to conduct espionage”. It has faced similar concerns in India as well and to placate those security concerns, Huawei had agreed to place the source code for its telecom equipment in an escrow account. “We are working with various national governments on their security concerns,” Huawei Vice President (Corporate Media Affairs) Scott Sykes said. Of the company’s USD 1.5 billion